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Anonymity in the Age of Panopticon

How would a person remain anonymous and/or protect her privacy in the age of endless tracking, database building and modelling by ever more sophisticated computers? Currently our search engines and web providers have the ability to develop highly sophisticated models of our activities and interests. Current commercial interests tend to focus on tailoring ads to reflect content, the trend is towards ever more nuanced information gathering and modelling.

The fact that we see ads directly relevant to our search terms or the content we are accessing is commonplace, on this site and almost everywhere else. Content and interest oriented advertising is a rapidly growing field. Imagine if the ads not only reflected your interest, but used models that reflect your attractions that are holding your favourite drink or wearing your style of clothing. Historically advertising has always had to focus on broad demographics, aiming a particular magazine ad at a few generalizations about the readers. Now ads and ad generating algorithms can or will create ads specifically targeted at an individual.

Most of us might not like the extreme targeting that might occur with ads, but very few of us would like it if our governments were using the same databases to build personality and relationship profiles to us. For that matter, not many of us will like the idea of political ads specially tuned to create a specific response, depending on all the information in the database. (The same party might show a very different variation of the same ad to different people, depending on their search history, news preferences, social network and a thousand other data).

At deeper levels of detail, ads might be varied to reflect our mood depending on how our day or year might be going. For example, if I were searching for divorce lawyers and single bedroom apartments, a political ad might seek to appeal to my frustration and anger. If I were looking at cribs and strollers the ad might focus on my optimism. This tendency to greater nuance and data collection is enough to get any conspiracy theorist into a froth.

All of this is very much the near future, and has been explored in various ways in science fiction. A panopticon of (mostly profit oriented) surveillance over every nuance and detail of our lives is already becoming normal. Where science fiction might get interesting is in exploring ways an individual, nefarious or not, might hide in plain sight. Every system has its weaknesses, and humans are innately keen to exploit weaknesses in systems. Early system hackers did things like scare buffalo so much they ran off a cliff, rather than merely killing them with weapons and risking injury. Current system hackers have a much more complex system to engage with, and so are likely to have much more subtle and complex responses.

Some ideas for hiding in plain sight include:

Each individual maintaining an automated array of hundreds or thousands of randomized identities, so that each interaction is spoofed as a different identity and no meaningful profile could be created. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t already thought of this and put it into place.

Deep encryption of every interaction with the web, perhaps also using multiple identities. The funny thing about encryption is that using it is a quite rational choice, and yet the mere fact of encryption is seen as evidence of nefarious intent by authorities.

Complete detachment from all electronic media. The survivalist concept, ‘going off the grid’. All well and good, but hardly forward looking.

There are a lot of juicy SF issues tied to the amazing mixed blessing we call the internet, and it is not at all certain what the end result will be. I don’t think I can imagine disconnecting from the internet and electronic media now, especially since it is a significant part of my livelihood. I suppose I’d best set about anonymizing myself.